The last three clauses of the Covering Clauses are mainly the cleaning up of technical matters and make for rather dry dreading without context. The closest that we get to understanding why they are even in here at all, are the bunfights that happen in a CoAG meeting, or perhaps when the Federal Government has a spat with one of the States. It took more than a decade for the bunfight between the colonies to finally be resolved and the only reason that I think that it happened was because they ran out of buns.
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution/preamble
7. Repeal of Federal Council Act
The Federal Council of Australasia Act, 1885, is hereby repealed, but so as not to affect any laws passed by the Federal Council of Australasia and in force at the establishment of the Commonwealth.
Any such law may be repealed as to any State by the Parliament of the Commonwealth, or as to any colony not being a State by the Parliament thereof.
The Constitution of Australia had a different problem to that of either the United States or Canada in that as the Commonwealth would be formed out of a collection of entities which already had responsible government, it needed to save those laws as well as any laws that that collection of entities may have made in congress before the act of federation.
As best as I can tell, the Federal Council of Australasia was an executive body which was formed on an ad hoc basis, from delegates from the several colonies, to decide matters which were of concurrent importance to them. Before federation, this included Fiji and New Zealand which is why there was an expectation that they would sign up for the Commonwealth of Australia.
The problem with the Federal Council of Australasia was that it was hideously impotent. It couldn't actually make rulings which would bind the colonies, as the Council was itself still subordinate to the Crown at Westminster. Really, all it could do was make some decisions with regards disputes between the colonies, and make the executive decisions with regards the defence and or military posturing of the colonies. Hence the reason why an Australasian military corps was sent to South Africa to fight in the Boer War before there was actually an Australia or a dominion of New Zealand. It was also the instrument which would eventually decide to commit suicide through the act of federation and recommend the Constitution for a referendum.
In addition to its impotence was the problem that it wasn't really taken seriously by the several colonies on occasion. There were frequent meetings of the council between 1885 and 1900 when New South Wales simply never bother to send any delegates as they saw it of no import. When the richest and in theory most powerful colony can't even be bothered to show up, you know you've got problems.
8. Application of Colonial Boundaries Act
After the passing of this Act the Colonial Boundaries Act, 1895, shall not apply to any colony which becomes a State of the Commonwealth; but the Commonwealth shall be taken to be a self-governing colony for the purposes of that Act.
121 years after the act of federation, the inclusion of Clause 8 looks rather a bit strange. However, roll the clock back to 1899 and suddenly, if there was ever a thing that the six colonies of Australia were going to have a right proper barney over (technical term), then it would be about borders. New South Wales started out by default as owning practically everything but starting with the proclamation of the Swan River Colony, the amount of land under the control of the New South Welsh Government in Sydney, steadily decreased.
There were arguments about the gauges of railways and when the Colonial Victorian Government ran it's broad gauge railway north of the Murray River, New South Wales built Albury railway station as a very very large marker as if to say "you shall not pass any further".
The Colonial Boundaries Act, 1895 is incredibly short and at just three sections, it can be summarized quite quickly. Firstly, the boundaries of a colony were determined by the Queen by Order in Council or letters patent. They then required the consent of the colony in question in order to change the borders. Thirdly, Section 3 was a list of who the Self-Governing Colonies were. For the purposes of the Act, Canada and Newfoundland, the Six Colonies separately, and New Zealand and two Colonies in South Africa were declared to be Self-Governing.
My suspicion is that Clause 8 is the parliament at Westminster, trying to wash its hands of any and all responsibility that it might have had, if the project of Federation had gone wrong. Apart from Western Australia yelling "shut the borders" at the slightest provocation, and the very slow lurch towards statehood of the Northern Territory, I don't think that we appreciate just how much New South Wales and Victoria hated each other.
9. Constitution
The Constitution of the Commonwealth shall be as follows:
The Constitution
This Constitution is divided as follows:
Chapter I—The Parliament
Part I—General
Part II—The Senate
Part III—The House of Representatives
Part IV—Both Houses of the Parliament
Part V—Powers of the Parliament
Chapter II—The Executive Government
Chapter III—The Judicature
Chapter IV—Finance and Trade
Chapter V—The States
Chapter VI—New States
Chapter VII—Miscellaneous
Chapter VIII—Alteration of the Constitution
The Schedule
Clause 9 is a table of contents for the next 128 Sections which follow. Clause 9 is almost of zero consequence and I would suggest is actually impossible for a judge to make a ruling on.
Clause 9 kind of acts as a template for other acts to copy and you can sort of see the influence of both the Swiss Constitution in defining explicitly where Finance and Trade are to be put, and the separation of powers which is kind of modelled on the United States Constitution. There are some specific provisions such as Ministers of the Crown being required to gain a seat in Parliament within three months of becoming a Minister and the idea that any Bill including the Budget being held as a trigger for a double dissolution election; which are inventions of the Australian Constitutional Conventions and of nowhere else from what I can determine.
The first 9 clauses of the Constitution and indeed none of the Constitution contain any mention of a bill or claim or rights and it also doesn't address the Commonwealth's relationship to First Peoples. I would prefer to see some kind of recognition of First Peoples and the initial injury which the imposition of an Empire by force perpetrated but sadly, I think that there are too many racist knaves in too many positions of power for that to happen without a fight.
Perhaps surprisingly, I rather like the fact that we have no explicit Bill Of Rights contained within the Constitution but rather, rights legislation and the schedules which go on to enumerate what those rights are, are outside of the Constitution and contained in other instruments such as the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986, the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Racial Discrimination Act 1984. Why? Because the Constitution in principle is the set of rules that defines how you make rules; and human rights which are already deemed to exist at law, unless hedged in by it, might be discoverable. If they were crystallised in the Constitution, then new human rights which are found (such as the right to health care, education, and various forms of human dignity) are less likely to be admitted. That was a lesson that we learnt from the United States before the Constitution was written.
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